Often there are two favorites. Like Kristi v Midori, or Tara v Michelle, or Kat v Debi, so it's not really all that shocking when perhaps the slightly less favorite person wins.

Usually, in Oly history, the favorite always wins.

It's actually easier to list the exceptions: Sarah in 02 and Kat in 84, and that's pretty much it fro the gals. Urmanov in 94, Schwartz in 68, Schafer in 32. G&P in 94. That's really all I can think of/agree to.

In the Olympics, for example, the defending women's world champion sometimes settled for the silver medal, and the woman who won the Olympic gold medal had been the World silver medalist or had not even been on the World podium the previous year ---

1976 - Dorothy Hamill, twice World silver medalist, won the gold medal over Dianne DeLeeuw, the 1975 World Champion and Christine Errath, the 1974 World Champion.

1980 - Annet Poetszch, the 1978 World champion and 1997, 1979 World silver medalist, won the gold medal over Linda Fratianne, the 1977/1979 World champion and 1978 World silver medalist. There really was no clear-cut favorite at Lake Placid-
Annet and Linda were co-favorites, based on their competitive record.

1984 - Katarina Witt, the 1982 World silver medalist and fourth-place finisher at the 1983 Worlds, won the gold medal over Rosalyn Sumners, the 1983 World champion. The media tried to play this competition as a showdown between Roz and Elaine Zayak, but Katarina Witt skated great programs and won, fairly and squarely.

On the other hand, the "favorite" often did win at the Olympics -
Peggy Fleming in 1968, Ludmila/Oleg Protopopov in 1968,
Trixi Schuba in 1972, Rodnina/Ulanov in 1972, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean in 1984, Katarina Witt in 1988, etc.

What is really exciting is an Olympic competition in which a number of competitors are pretty evenly matched and the title is up for grabs. In 1980, Robin Cousins, Jan Hoffman, and Charlie Tickner skated a close competition - either of them could have won the gold medal.

In 2002, Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, and Sasha Cohen all had the opportunity to win the gold medal -- and Sarah Hughes skated through them and won.

So: in most cases either the favorites, or the close to favorites won. The only ones that were really a suprise were : Urmanov-with the return of the pros people thought they would win. Hughes: she was predicted for a medal-but not gold.

I have to beg to differ in regards to Alexei

I think that I remembered most gave him a slight edge of Plushenko. Eventhough, Plush was the current world champ. & With Alexei Goodwill performance plushenko was a early favorite. But, once the season started to roll. Alexei would win & win & win. Not to mention his Programs. Both WOnderful & Compared to everyone's his were"UNBEATABLE" when skated clean. & when it came down to the GPF. Alexei was 2nd going into the final freeskate. I belive that he fell on a jump.
Though, he did double a jump & had a lowback on another jump in the Final. His skating & Program was still enough to win. Though, you have to give credit to Mishin for coming up with that God Awful progam for plushenko. But, they dumped that quick enough. Carmen, was a much better program, they should have used one. But, with that Win at the GPF, the front runner had changed. Alexei was now the front runner with a slight edge. If Skated clean which he had been doing all season. His programs were unbeatable. He the best programs of the field. I will say this. That going into the Mens competition. The only medal that was up for grabs was the Bronze. Because, the Gold & Silver were already taken. Just by who would be close.

Originally posted by curious Evgeny was the world champ and fave at the Olympics. Alexei didn't win and win,infact he was struggling before Kitchener. He was very lucky to win there(only by a judge) with a subpar performance.

I've to agree here. Frankly, Alexei's win in Kitchener was really a lil' lucky (... but almost essential to him, for the rest of the season). It could've gone either way, if Evgeny'd have won, you wouldn't have heard any complaint from my side.